


Stages

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gap Filler, M/M, Poor Will, Post-Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, Post-Red Dragon, Pre-Red Dragon, Relationship Study, rated for dark themes and mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:55:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A double-edged love story. </p>
<p>All Will’s life is a stage in the aftermath of Hannibal’s surrender to the FBI — stages of grief, of transformation, of change. Jack and Alana and Molly and Hannibal are part of Will’s attempt to be the author of his own life story for once…but some things may be beyond his control. All the world’s a stage, an arena for performances genuine or invented. Maybe love is a choice. Maybe happiness and contentment are, too. Or maybe circumstances are the least of the things Will can’t control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this as a defense of Will when I heard someone claim that Will's relationships with Hannibal and with Molly couldn't coexist in the way the show presented. They were certain that Will couldn't _really_ love Molly and then have the ending that season three gave him. His ultimate end was out of character, they insisted. How could he be so connected to Hannibal after the "break-up" in Digestivo and three years of separation and growth? 
> 
> I was so frustrated by this interpretation of Will Graham that I set to work on a fic exploring his complicated grief over the loss of Hannibal after Digestivo, and the development and eventual fracturing of his relationship with Molly. My original title was "Romeo and Rosaline" because Will's love for Molly was very real, but in the end it just wasn't _it_. As the writing process progressed, I changed the title as I realized that this story is just as much about Will's relationship with Hannibal as his relationship with Molly, possibly even more so. It's also about his relationship with himself. 
> 
> In other words, I broke my own heart for no good reason over people and relationships who don't exist. And it went on for multiple chapters. Save me. (And possibly comment, if you wouldn't mind. ;)) 
> 
> Aaaaaaand I'm posting the first chapter of a relationship angst-fest on Valentine's Day. Am I a terrible person?

_February 2015_

The tears won’t come.

He’s just been through forty-eight hours of relentless trauma, and Will knows that crying is the only sane response. He stares at the falling snow instead, watching the flash of sirens fade and the darkness beyond his window brighten into the first cold hints of morning. Sleep is just as impossible as tears, and his eyes ache with the lack of both. 

A van arrives midmorning, just as the sun is climbing high enough to turn the snow into a sea of white, frozen and glittering. The glare hurts his eyes, a searing accompaniment to the pain lancing through his skull. The painkillers are leaving his system at last, but he can’t muster the energy to retrieve the bottle of pills the FBI medic left him. 

He regards the van with distant disinterest. It is the least engaging thing about his view up until the moment the doors open and all seven of his dogs come bounding out. The pain in his head screams, but Will is up in a flash, unbolting the front door before the dogs even have a chance to scratch at the frame. 

There is a man at the wheel that Will doesn’t recognize — probably someone on the Verger payroll. He’s just glad that Alana didn’t come herself to return the dogs. He doesn’t know what she’s trying to prove by making the effort to send them back so quickly, especially when she and Margot must be up to their eyes in FBI interviews and investigations. Maybe that she’s still his friend, after everything. Or maybe she’s hoping to avoid contact, and avoid him looking any more closely at exactly what sequence of events led to Hannibal Lecter finding himself free to carve a bloody path across Muskrat Farm. 

She needn’t have bothered, on either count.

He opens the door wide for his dogs, and feels himself smile at the click of their nails across the floor. Buster takes advantage of his small size and plants himself between Will’s feet, panting happily. Winston regards him solemnly until Will reaches out to scratch his ears. The gesture earns him a warm lick against his palm. He kneels down to rub at heads and ears and tails and realizes just how badly he’s missed them.

Their warm, wet affection drifts into curiosity before long, and they’re nosing madly around the room, each of them snuffling with particular interest around the chair Hannibal had occupied only hours before. He suspects they’re looking for him; Hannibal had always given them treats. He ignores their search, the growing pain in his head, the crunch of ice and gravel as the van outside pulls away. The silence returns, unbroken by anything except the sound of his dogs. 

For the first time in months, he isn’t tense to the point of pain. The numbness feels almost like peace. 

===

The snow is melting a little each day under the determined stare of the sun. His yard is an ugly patchwork of dead grass and muddy ice when he realizes that he has not ventured beyond his front porch in days. 

His pantry is all but bare, but he hasn’t been eating enough to require a trip into town for groceries just yet. He’s drinking too much, he knows, and he hasn’t showered in a couple of days. He’s healing from a long list of injuries, he tells himself.

He is depressed, he corrects himself eventually. The dogs force him to be aware of it. It’s the hopeful way they linger by the bed when they’re indoors, looking on in confusion when he refuses to move as another day crawls by, the way they bark at him through the screen door when he lets them out, but doesn’t join them outside. They wander off eventually. They miss him, he knows. He wonders if their sensation of grief is anything like his. 

It takes a monstrous amount of alcohol to loosen the flow of his thoughts enough to make way for an epiphany. He’s lost many things in his life, most of them in the last year, but he realizes that there is only one missing element that has him feeling uprooted. 

One _person_. 

The one person who had been his lifeline during his return to the field and his descent into what he thought was madness. The only sympathetic ear and solid foundation as the world shook and shifted beneath his feet. The one that Will both pushed against and fought toward when he was in prison. The lodestar Will trailed after from the first moment he woke up in the hospital, held together by surgical sutures and the unyielding need to find _him_ again. 

Hannibal.

He hates that knowing the truth about him doesn’t quite manage to change what happened between them. Now he's gone. 

And Will feels like nothing.

_The light from friendship won’t reach us for a million years._

And yet he feels almost certain it’s that very light that burns behind his eyelids every night and keeps him from sleeping. 

He gives up on trying to untangle his thoughts any further, and drinks himself into a daily stupor instead. Not thinking is always preferable to thinking in endless concentric circles with _him_ as their center. 

All his celebrated empathy, and the only person he can't properly read is himself. Sometimes he laughs into his whiskey glass about the irony. 

He hauls himself up each day to set out food and let the dogs out, and collapses back into bed until they scratch at the door.

_March 2015_

He remembers the empty void of the days in the hospital, after Hannibal left him twitching on his kitchen floor. Hours spent in bed and staring past the ceiling, exploring the vaults of his own mind and carefully constructing mental mausoleums for the dead. 

He’s spending hours in bed again, staring past the ceiling of his home. Seeing nothing, feeling nothing. 

This is worse. 

Sometimes he thinks he sees the feathered stag that had once wandered his mind like a wild thing, just a dark glimpse of movement in his periphery, but when he turns his head there is nothing but the blank, leafless horizon beyond the windows. Always nothing. 

He dreams of Abigail, sometimes. His subconscious mind reaches for her, but it’s his conscious mind that suffers when he wakes to nothing but a great, ragged emptiness. So much nothing that he can’t breathe.

He finds himself missing her more than he ever has, more than he knew was possible. His anger kept the empty ache at bay during his time in the freezing cell at the BSHCI; his constructed memory of her had filled the vacant months after Hannibal left them both drowning in their own blood. 

He wishes he had held onto the illusion of Abigail. He’d always known he’d have to let her go eventually, or end up right back in an institution with _insane_ present or implied in the title, whether or not it was preceded by _criminally_. Now he misses the hint of warmth her projected smile and presence carried with it. Even ghosts trailing guilt like vapor were better than being so alone.

And maybe, just maybe, if he had someone to take care of, it might be easier to take care of himself, too. 

Selfish, he thinks. As selfish as the way he stares at the chair Hannibal pulled beside his bed weeks ago and realizes that he has never really understood what it meant to miss someone until now. When the dogs are outside, he can almost _hear_ the silence around him, a cold, dynamic, claustrophobic thing, pressing against his head and ears and eyes until he wants to scream. All he can hear are his own words, dropping like weights into this same air before it went stagnant and dead.

_I won't miss you._

He was — _is_ — a liar. 

_April 2015_

He knows the time alone with his dogs and his thoughts is only a temporary reprieve. He’s never left to his own devices forever, no matter how badly he needs or wants it. Jack arrives unannounced; Will isn’t sure whether he’s angry or just exhausted by the sight of him.

“Jack,” he acknowledges flatly, opening the door just wide enough to let the dogs out. They give Jack a perfunctory sniffing and rush off into the yard. Jack doesn’t acknowledge them.

“Hello, Will.” 

Will doesn’t realize what a disaster area his house has become until Jack steps into it, all clean lines and precisely buttoned coat. He almost feels embarrassed, but shrugs it off at the last moment. He really, really doesn’t care what Jack Crawford thinks of him. Jack’s sharp eyes don’t miss a thing, but he doesn’t comment. At least not aloud. The lift of his eyebrows and the press of his lips speak very eloquently. 

“I came to check up on you, Will. You haven’t answered my calls.”

Will reaches for patience and courtesy and finds them well beyond his reach. “And what does that tell you?” he throws out, surprised at the bitterness saturating his tone. 

“You don’t want to talk to me,” Jack concedes, calm and businesslike, with just a hint of concern that burns Will far more than indifference would have. “That’s your right. But you haven’t answered Alana’s calls either. Tell me honestly. Are you okay?”

Will resists the urge to laugh aloud at Jack throwing around terms like _honest_ and _okay,_ especially in reference to him. He knows he’s being unfair. Jack had committed career suicide to help him take down Hannibal Lecter, and come all the way to Florence when Will had gone after him alone. Jack is his friend, or was, once. 

Will isn’t sure he does friends anymore. 

“I’m not great,” Will admits, because Jack doesn’t respond well to obvious lies and because honesty will end this conversation much more quickly. “But I’m getting there.” 

He’s not sure about the truth of that. But if he’s not sure, then Jack won’t be able to call him on the lie. 

Jack looks unconvinced, but he lets the subject drift into the background of the conversation after that. He mentions the fact that he’s been reinstated at the FBI; Will congratulates him and hopes he doesn’t sound as monotonous as he feels. He doesn’t ask if Will wants to come back, although the mention was probably a backdoor way of broaching the subject. Will leaves the bait dangling on that particular hook and Jack doesn’t press the issue.

Jack eventually stands up to leave. He stares out the window for a long moment, and Will wonders whether he’s seeing Hannibal surrendering with hands raised as the snow drifts down around them all. Or maybe he sees Will shaking in handcuffs after vomiting up Abigail Hobbs’ severed ear. 

He’s unreadable when he sighs and meets Will’s eyes at last. “See you at the trial,” is his goodbye. He turns back on the front steps to add, “Call me if you need anything, Will.”

 _I hope I never see you or anyone ever again_ , he doesn’t say, and nods in reply. 

He wonders if Jack made this visit to unburden himself of any guilt over Will. He studies the taut lines of his back as he walks to his car and thinks that he doesn’t look unburdened at all. 

_July 2015_

Will decides to leave Maryland well before Hannibal’s trial is over. It’s an extended nightmare, being forced to walk past roiling crowds of reporters and photographers covering what is already being called the criminal trial of the century. He does his best to shut it all out and lock himself deep into the quiet vaults of his own mind, even when he’s testifying.

Hannibal is there, his eyes locked on him every instant, his almost-smile a constant fixture on his face. Like he knows that Will is hiding in his own head. 

Like he’s waiting for him to come back out. 

_I want you to know exactly where I am. And where you can always find me._

He avoids Hannibal’s eyes, where he will see far, far too much, and answers every question he is asked. He quietly walks to the restroom and vomits after each trip to the witness stand. 

He tries to avoid Alana, too, but Alana is not restrained with chains and cuffs as Hannibal is, and she follows him on the final day of the trial. 

Her inquiries about how he’s been are too much like small talk. He remembers walking with her through the cold fields outside his house, and how they'd laughed together. She’d always been so concerned for him, so warm and kind and willing to help. He remembers kissing her, just the once. It was safe, gentle, perfect. He searches in vain for any hint of that Alana as she speaks. Her eyes are hard now, and they grow harder still when she finally says what she came to say.

“I’ve been offered the wardenship at the BSHCI. If that’s where they put Hannibal, I’m going to take it.”

He feels abruptly cold, but he still manages to say, “Good.” 

He isn’t in the courtroom when the verdict and the sentencing come down, but he sees the news headlines that are released almost the instant both are pronounced. Hannibal will spend the rest of his life under Alana Bloom’s care at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

It would be courteous to call Jack and Alana and tell them he’s moving. Leave a forwarding address, spit out a few pleasantries about keeping in touch. 

He doesn’t.

_August 2015_

It’s a long, slow crawl up the East Coast for Will and the dogs. He’d purchased his station wagon years ago precisely because it could carry the whole pack when he removed all the rear seats, but it’s still a tight squeeze. Frequent stops to let them stretch their legs and relieve themselves means their progress is achingly slow, but Will doesn’t mind the snail’s pace. He uses the time to scroll through house listings from Virginia to Maine. 

He’s drifting north because going south would feel like regression. Hannibal’s voice follows him, a regression of its own.

_Where does the difference between the past and the future come from?_

_Before you and after you._

It’s still true. Only now Will is trying to mold the _after Hannibal_ phase into something permanent and lasting. He feels each of the miles stretching between him and Hannibal, waiting in his cell in Baltimore. 

He wants no part of anything that happened _before_. A clean break with every part of that life will be best. 

He drives on. 

It's easier to leave his former life behind than he would have anticipated even just a few months ago. He no longer has a job or acquaintances to hold him in place or tie him down with commitments, emotional or professional. His house in Wolf Trap is bought and paid for, and he has savings that should carry him into his new life. Maybe he can even find a renter for his old home. He's doubtful about the prospect of renting a place that's two main selling points are "total isolation from civilization" and "authentic dog hair on every surface" but he'll manage. Those had been _the_ selling points for him.

Maybe he can sell it to a developer instead. 

Will finds himself in Maine, looking with approval on thickly clustered pine trees and an isolated home with a flat stretch of open yard and a hint of the water in the air. The Northeast tip of the United States. He knows he’s fled as far as he can without disturbing old memories or leaving the coast entirely behind. There are many things he can bear, but he’s not sure he could bear that. After a lifetime spent by the Gulf of Mexico and the colder, Virginian branch of the Atlantic, the sea is practically in his blood. 

He feels the distance between himself and Wolf Trap and his old house, between himself and Baltimore and all the people there, and wonders whether it’s the only thing he cannot bear. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I which Will meets Molly and Winston is the best wingman.

_September 2015_

Will loves the Moosehead Lake region of Maine. The state itself boasts one of the lowest populations in the United States; in Moosehead Lake, the moose, fittingly, outnumber the humans by a significant margin. In his corner of field and forest, he has a view of low, blue mountains screened by sky-scraping pines, spruces, and firs. Tree needles and cones crunch under his feet when he walks down to the stream that crosses the property he’s renting, and the dogs run beside him, eagerly splashing and chasing a thousand scents into the trees.

He lives off his savings a little longer than is probably wise before he starts looking for a job. Even when necessity forces him to shut the dogs in the house and drive into town, he treats the job hunt as an afterthought and looks for bait and tackle shops first. He’d left so many of his supplies back in Wolf Trap. 

The Moosehead Marina is his first stop when no smaller tackle shops present themselves along the road. It's bigger and more thickly populated with tourists than he cares for, but the fishing poles displayed in the window beside a NOW HIRING sign conspire to draw him inside. He’s grown out his beard a little in the past months, and his glasses help to cover his face; he’ll just have to hope that no one in rural Maine is an avid reader of _TattleCrime_. 

He knows his hunched posture and miserable expression won’t impress anyone looking to hire, so he forces himself to relax his muscles as he walks through the sliding doors and scans the aisles of boat parts and camping gear for fishing supplies.

“Can I help you?” a female voice offers from behind the counter on his left. He just manages to suppress his start of surprise. He hopes his smile looks less like a grimace than it feels when he turns it on her. 

“Just looking for fishing equipment.” 

“That would be aisle five,” she replies, pointing him toward it. He nods and is on the point of wandering away, but something in her pause holds him in place. “You don’t look like a fisherman,” she adds at last. He finally looks at her. 

She’s tall, with blonde haired piled into a haphazard bun on top of her head and the thick fringes of her bangs framing a round, kind face. She has jeans and a flannel shirt on underneath a blue employee vest that’s big on her; the name tag on the pocket reads _Molly._ Her age isn’t easy to judge, but he guesses about thirty. Her smile is professional but genuine. 

She hasn’t recognized him from _TattleCrime_ or any other news website, he realizes. She isn’t implying anything. She’s just being friendly. 

For a moment, he doesn’t know what to do with that. 

“I don’t look like a lot of things that I am,” he jokes, or tries to, but it comes out sounding flat and a little bitter. He’s so badly out of practice with casual conversation.

He waits for a look of confusion or distaste, but Molly just laughs. “Alright, Mr. Mysterious,” she replies, and waves him after her as she leads the way to aisle five. 

She asks him a million questions about what precisely he’s looking for, and doesn’t seem phased by his inability to speak in long sentences. She helps him find everything he needs and more, and gives him another one of her artless smiles after ringing up the order. 

He manages a smile that feels marginally more natural on the way out the door, and doesn’t realize until he’s halfway back to the house that he’d completely forgotten to ask about the job. 

===

He finds work, but not at the Marina. It’s a smaller boating operation that supplies tourists and residents alike with fishing and touring boats. Mechanics are always in demand, and Will falls back into the mindless rhythms of repairing motors and outfitting boats with an ease that makes it feel as though he’d been doing this sort of work only yesterday. As though there weren’t years of the police academy, homicide work, teaching, and profiling in between. 

As though he hasn’t spent the last few years in a very particular sort of hell. 

Selective erasure of memories would be a convenient skill, he thinks. The closest he can get is the quiet of his mind when his hands are busy. It feels closer to peace than anything he’s felt in a long time. 

He does not think of the suspended, timeless moment of perfect peace in the Uffizi Art Gallery, months ago now. He does not think of Hannibal’s smile or his words. _If I saw you every day forever, Will, I would remember this time._

Will doesn’t want to remember anything, and the only thing he wants to see every day is the water. Maine is full of parks and nature reserves; it’s practically woven through with lakes and ponds and streams. Will decides to try and fish in as many as he can. But he doesn’t buy his supplies in the shop by the docks where he works. For reasons he doesn’t dare define for himself, he drives the extra fifteen minutes to the Marina when he needs something. 

===

He makes the dogs' food from scratch like always, but he still has to make the occasional run to the local pet shop for flea treatments and the odd batch of supplies. The closest shop is in an historic part of town, the cramped streets bordered by decades-old two-story buildings with shops arranged behind painted glass and dated displays. 

There is a used book store beside the pet shop, and a free book cart out front. He finds himself glancing through it whenever he walks past. Books, he finds, are an absorbing distraction in the increasingly common moments when he needs his brain to drown in something other than the pressing need to call Jack or Alana and demand to know _what is he doing?_

Even in his mind, he carefully substitutes _what_ for _how_. 

“Don’t I know you?” 

He recognizes the voice before he turns his head. Her flannel and jeans combination is immediately recognizable even without the blue employee vest over the top, although her hair is falling over her shoulders instead of piled on her head. It's the first time he's seen her outside the Marina shop, and for a moment his mind stumbles over the image, as though she shouldn't exist outside its walls. It’s a ridiculous thought; he shakes it off. 

But he's already taken too long to reply, and Molly's eyebrows have raised, just a hair. 

Damn it. 

He's always been bad at people. At least the ones who aren’t dead, crazy, or both.

It’s another thought he shakes off immediately, another thing he definitely can’t say. He refuses to allow himself to think that it was exactly the sort of thing he could say to Hannibal, and forces a smile onto his face. 

“Hi,” he says, finally. His voice feels rusty, as if he’s half forgotten how to use it. But that’s ridiculous; he’d been talking to the dogs just this morning. He glances down at Winston beside him, as if he can confirm the fact. Winston’s gaze holds something like concern, and Will is less than encouraged. 

“Is this your dog?” Molly asks, drifting closer, but not quite encroaching on his space — yet. Her eager expression threatens a personal bubble breach at any moment. “I love dogs. May I?” 

For a moment, Will is mystified by the question before he finally realizes she wants to pet Winston. Winston, for his part, is wagging his tail eagerly. Traitor.

“Uh, yeah. Go ahead.” He almost winces at the reluctance in his tone, but Molly doesn’t seem to have heard it. She bends down to Winston and offers one hand for his inspection. Once he’s thoroughly sniffed and licked her palm, he’s content to have both ears scratched. More than content — he’s practically glowing. 

It’s possible, Will reflects, that he hasn’t been socializing the dogs enough. Of course, socializing dogs is a difficult prospect for humans who don’t socialize themselves. He suppresses a sigh.

"My son wants a dog,” Molly says, rubbing Winston’s face and neck with both hands now. “It’s just the two of us, so I feel like I owe him a playmate. And maybe it'd make a good guard dog, too.” She glances back at the pet shop’s glass door a few yards away. “I came to look at the puppies.”

“You’d be better off avoiding a shop,” Will blurts before he can consider whether offering unsolicited advice is rude. “You never know where those dogs are coming from. It can be unethical sources, sometimes. Puppy mills.”

He can’t decipher whether her expression is irritation or interest, but it’s too late now, so he presses forward. 

“Shelters are the best option. Plenty of strays who could use a good home.”

She nods silently, and Will has just finished deciding that the next occasion for socializing himself and his dogs will be at the upcoming funeral for his conversational skills when she finally replies. 

“I'll do that.” There is no trace of sarcasm in her tone, to Will’s astonishment. It’s a sensation that only intensifies when she adds, “Thanks.”

She offers Winston one final ear scratch as she stands up, and her eyes drift from Winston’s mottled fur to the book Will has long since forgotten he is holding. Her lips twitch into a smile. 

“Never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo,” she quotes, gesturing at the paperback tucked against his side, so yellowed and creased that it’s a miracle she could even make out _Romeo and Juliet_ printed on the cover. 

“Yeah,” he shrugs, even though it’s not really an adequate response. 

“Very cultured of you,” she offers. He's not sure how much she’s making fun. 

“You enjoy Shakespeare?” he asks, to his own surprise. He suspects the dormant section of his brain devoted to small talk is finally booting up. 

She tilts her head noncommittally. “Saw the movie. I had a Leo DiCaprio phase along with every other middle school girl back in the day. _You_ enjoy Shakespeare?”

“I enjoy raiding the free books stand.”

“Fair enough. Well, enjoy your book.” He doesn’t realize that she’s invaded his space until she takes a step away from him. “I guess I’m going to _not_ go to the pet shop. Thanks for the advice about the shelters.”

Will isn’t sure whether the gesture he makes is identifiable as either a nod or a headshake, but he hopes it’s sufficient. She smiles as though it is, and takes another step back.

“I’m Molly, by the way,” she says, waving. Hello or goodbye, he’s not sure. 

_I know_ , he doesn’t say, because that would be creepy. “Will,” he offers instead. 

“Nice to meet you, Will. Officially. I’ve seen you around the Marina a lot. You getting to know the area pretty well?”

“Not as well as I’d like.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re getting acquainted with the locals. There’s a leash-free park just a few minutes away. For you and —“ She trails off and glances at Winston.

“Winston,” he introduces.

“Winston,” she repeats, and her smile is well-contained, but full of suppressed laughter. “You named your dog Winston.” Her grin is threatening to burst, but she reins it in. “Wally and I usually turn up at the park on the weekends. Maybe I’ll see you there sometime. And your dogs. How many do you have?”

“Seven,” he answers, before he can think better of it. 

Molly’s smile finally bursts into a full-bodied laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever not known how much you ship something until you write it? I ship Will/Molly so. hard. And yet I ship Hannigram so hard that it makes me wonder about my mental stability. It's a paradox. AND NOT A PLEASANT ONE. ("Why can't Will just be happy??" I scream into the night. There is no answer.)
> 
> This fic is just about finished and I'll be posting updates every few days. Five chapters to go! Next up: Will gets closer to Molly, but Hannibal manages to haunt him so effectively that he might as well be a vengeful ghost.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will's dreams — both the waking and sleeping varieties.

_October 2015_

Will dreams of Hannibal. 

He’s certain of the fact, even when the images vanish before he opens his eyes, gasping for air and soaked in sweat like a man who’s spent the night running for his life. 

Sometimes he wakes at the right moment in his erratic sleep cycle, and he remembers the brush of feathers against his back, the intense chill of rippling goosebumps as a hot, humid, animal breath steams against his neck. Sometimes he feels the ice-cold air of the BSHCI, hears the distant screams of the worst inmates, breathes the damp smell of his cell. There was no mirror in the cell his waking mind has worked so hard to forget, but his sleeping mind provides one. When he is drawn to the mirror by sheer inevitability, it is Hannibal’s placid expression that stares back. A hint of a smile in those hard eyes and cruel lips. 

In his dreams, he _is_ Hannibal Lecter. 

He’d all but decided against exploring the leash-free park Molly mentioned, but the dreams are forcing him into the uncomfortable position of needing to drink himself into oblivion or expel himself out into the sunlight for some distraction. Will decides to go to park after all. 

He almost talks himself out of going three times before breakfast on a chilly Saturday morning in mid-October, but the dogs catch onto his intentions when he lingers by the hanging row of their leashes, and he can’t disappoint them. And the dogs _do_ need socializing and variety in their lives. 

He needs the same things. Locking himself in his home probably isn’t a great method for preserving whatever’s left of his sanity. Will grumbles to himself, but he can’t quite help but enjoy the dogs’ excitement over being piled into the station wagon. 

The park, a large grassy expanse with a sprinkling of trees and a few paved picnic areas, is an easy distance from both his home and the town. There are far fewer people out with their families and dogs than he expected, and the playground and baseball field are a good distance away from the open spaces for the dogs. Will likes it immediately. 

The whole pack runs with abandon, chasing all the balls and frisbees that he throws for them, until his aching arm forces them to entertain themselves for a while. Fortunately for them, a fresh pair of arms presents itself. 

Winston’s excitement alerts Will to Molly’s arrival before he sees her. She’s lightly bundled up with a knit cap pulled low over her forehead, but her long blonde hair and bright smile are as impossible to miss as a bonfire in the dark. There is a boy with her, short and stuffed into a coat. 

“Hi, Winston,” she calls first, before finally turning her smile in his direction. “Hi, Will.” 

“Hi,” he answers, trying for a smile himself. He’s not sure he quite makes it. “Is this your son?”

The boy in question is already half-buried in a swarm of sniffing dogs and he looks enraptured at the prospect. “What are their names?” he asks, sparing Will the shortest of glances. He’s small and wiry, with dark hair and a reserved face.

“That’s Walter,” Molly confirms, stretching out an arm in a gesture Will recognizes as maternal concern. “They don’t bite, do they? The dogs?”

“No, they don’t bite.” 

“Thank goodness for that. Wally, this is Will. Say hi. And we really should have asked you if it was okay to pet the dogs.” She’s grimacing now.

“Hi,” Wally calls impatiently, his focus entirely on the cloud of fur and tongues and tails surrounding him. 

“It’s okay,” Will answers Molly, but he’s studying Wally’s grin, the way it seems permanently affixed to his face as the dogs pant around him. 

“Can I throw the ball? What are their names?” he repeats eagerly. Will starts with Winston and lists them off. Walter listens carefully, repeating the names to himself under his breath and yelling them with enthusiasm the moment he rockets away to throw their toys across the field. 

Molly is staring at Will when he finally glances her way. “Would you look at that,” she says. “You can smile.” 

She’s joking, but the hint of pleased surprise on her face means that there is some truth behind her words. He’d forgotten that hidden meanings weren’t always ugly. 

He blinks, shrugs, goes back to watching the dogs. He hadn’t even felt himself smile.

_December 2015_

He sees them at the park nearly every weekend after that; it’s almost a scheduled meeting. Wally gives him their home number in case he ever needs a dogsitter, and Will takes to calling them with apologies when he can’t make it to the park. He regrets the days he can’t come almost as much as Walter does. 

He no longer feels like a man struggling to speak his second language when he stands with Molly, watching Walter and the dogs run in the grass. It’s much easier to talk to her now, with the bridge a few weeks’ time has built between them. She’s open and talkative and communicates freely about herself and Walter and their life in Moosehead Lake.

Her name is Molly Foster, he learns, a widow who’d moved across country after her husband’s death. She’d lived near her parents in Oregon for most of her life, until an unexpected illness had taken her husband and she’d uprooted herself dramatically. Molly, Will thinks, is even more accomplished in the art of fleeing trauma than he is. And yet she remains open and bright when they speak, free of the chill and shadows he usually associates with submerged tragedy.

He wonders if this is what healing looks like, but doesn’t dwell on it. 

Her smiles and openness throw his stoicism into sharper relief than he cares for, but she doesn’t seem put off by his reserve. He can track her thoughts fairly easily, all things considered. They’re much closer to the surface than he’s used to, less murky and entirely non-pathological. 

She thinks he’s attractive. She’s interested, but cautious. He’s strange, after all. Stoicism can hide a lot of things, most of them bad. But she’s giving him a lot of room to prove himself. She wants to be his friend, even if that’s all this ever is. 

She _likes_ him. Compassion without condition has been a rarity in his life, and it surrounds him like a warm breeze. She expects nothing except decency and a little connection. He decides to try and provide it. 

She talks, he listens and deflects, and talks about his dogs too much. The dating shows he's seen on late night tv when he can't sleep unanimously urge people to shut up about pets or risk seeming obsessed. He probably _is_ obsessed; there are so many thoughts and memories that he has declared off limits to himself, and the dogs are the catch-all for his worries and fixations. He won’t worry about himself, so he worries about them. It doesn’t make for great conversation.

Most people talk about work, he knows. Molly does. He even laughs at some of her stories of helping inexperienced fisherman and boaters who are hopelessly lost in the Marina store. She waits for him to talk about his job.

He’s not sure which sounds worse: _I used to stare at bodies and pretend to be killers...at least until I lost my mind_ , or _I'm really good at fixing boat motors_. He doesn’t say either. 

But she absorbs everything he does say as if it's interesting. She replies, and laughs, and gently asks questions designed to get him to talk about himself. Her tactics are transparent. But then, maybe that was because she wasn’t hiding them. As far as he can tell, Molly doesn’t hide much of anything. 

It’s…refreshing. 

She prompts him with questions about himself every time they stand together on the sun-drenched grass of the park, watching Walter run with the dogs. She wants him to share himself with her. 

Eventually, he does. 

_January 2016_

"When was the last time you dated somebody? I'm guessing it's been awhile.”

It’s an inauspicious start to his first date in a long, long time. He’d finally worked up the willpower to ask her to dinner, several months later than he probably should have, and has spent every moment since questioning the decision. Dating requires communication. Openness. Exploration.

He tries to hide his wince in a swallow of wine — the best this seafood restaurant has to offer and it still tastes cheap — but he knows he isn’t fooling her. Molly sees him too well. 

"What makes you say that?” he deflects after a moment. 

"Because you look like you're about to jump out of your skin. And I have it on good authority that I'm not that scary." She’s good-humored and smiling and he relaxes. “Or are you always like this?” she adds, lifting an eyebrow. 

"I'm always like this,” he confirms with a breathless laugh. “But you're also a little intimidating."

"To an FBI agent?" she fires back. He’d never given her a detailed account of his association with the Bureau, but he had decided that complete silence was a terrible ongoing policy. Once he’d mentioned it, Walter had been beside himself until he got to see Will’s old badge. Molly loves to rib him about it. 

"I wasn't real FBI,” he reminds her lightly, reflecting her smile. It’s easier to let these facts roll off his back now. They lose their sticking power, their ability to torment, when Molly is smiling at him. Her presence is warmer than the candles burning on every table in the cramped dining space.

He thinks back to her question about dating, back to his brief time with Margot, back to the almost with Alana. Wonders whether they're still together and if they ever talk about him.

He winces and decides against mentioning any of it. 

"It's been a long time," he confirms instead, deciding at the last minute to speak with a self-deprecating note instead of a hollow one. More charming that way. 

Molly laughs at him anyway. His shoulders unknot at the sound. 

Will is almost relaxed by the time their waiter comes to take their order. 

_February 2016_

Silence, Will knows, is never a permanent state of affairs for anyone other than the dead. 

He never tells Molly the full details of his past work with the FBI, but he eventually outlines what he did. He sees the horror on her face as he describes in brief, non-graphic detail the fact that he used to hunt serial killers. He can’t look at her as he mentions the killers he helped to catch, listing them tonelessly.

“Oh, wow,” she murmurs, both her arms wrapped around one of his. “Did you work on the big case last year? It was all over the news — the psychiatrist who killed all those people. Ate them too, I think. What was the name…Hannibal. Hannibal the Cannibal?”

This isn’t a conversation Will wants to have in any universe with any person, but she’s nestled into his side, the fire’s burning in his fireplace, they’ve had a few beers, she doesn’t care that there’s dog hair all over his couch, and he _hurts_. 

“Yeah,” he says at last. “I was part of that.” 

“Oh my God. What was that like?” He sees the moment she catches the look on his face, although he has no hope of guessing what his expression is. It feels like nothing. Evidently it doesn’t look like nothing. “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” she offers immediately, stroking a tentative hand across his cheek. 

“Thank you.” He can almost taste his own relief. He leans into the touch, nearly desperate for it, but he still has to force himself not to flinch away. He’s sinking deep into himself. 

“Will,” she says quietly. “Are you okay?”

She doesn’t push. She never pushes. She’s sweet and considerate and so intent on reaching out to him. 

“Will.”

Her voice saying his name grounds him, reminds him that he is here and alive and okay. When she says it, it doesn't sound like a threat or an ugly memory. He forces himself to surface from the depths of his mind, to see her beside him. 

The firelight dances over her face. It’s round and full, no sharp angles or deep shadows — nothing hidden. 

"You're beautiful," he says, and he means so much more than her face, her smile, her eyes. She is the brightest light he's seen in such a long time. 

He loves her...and it's such a relief. He's not broken, not completely. 

He looks at her and sees a woman broken and healed. Maybe he can heal, too. 

===

When they make love, it’s simple and sweet. He feels so connected to her, and she’s warm and safe. Afterwards, she curls into his arms like he’s a barrier against the whole world. Like he’s a protector. Before morning, he curls into her instead, falling asleep with his head pillowed on the steady rise and fall of her chest. Like she’s _his_ protection, too. 

===

Will dreams of Molly now. 

They’re in the park with the dogs, or in his house by the stream, or standing outside his old home in Wolf Trap, staring at the warm lights of his windows. They shine above the mist tossing like waves, and his home looks exactly like a boat floating in a dark, empty sea. Molly’s face shines in the golden light, and at long last, Will feels peace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing happy!Will is a rewarding and magical experience. 
> 
> Up next: Will and Molly, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes loves. Then comes marriage. Then comes the Red Dragon. Wait, what?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scars are proof of healing...but they're also proof of past pain. Will's past begins to make way for his present.

_July 2016_

Marriage is more of a mutual decision than a romantic proposal, but Molly doesn't seem to mind. They pick out the ring together, and he slips it onto her finger with the assurance that she’s already said yes. 

It’s a quick and painless civil ceremony. Neither of them has any family within a thousand miles, so a big wedding wouldn’t be practical even if they were inclined toward the spectacle. In Will’s case, he doesn’t have any family to invite in the first place. 

Molly’s parents are far off in the mists of Oregon. He can sense their faint confusion and possible disapproval even via the brief Skype calls he’s been a part of, so he’s grateful when they avoid an event that would require invitations. He makes bad enough impressions over long distances; a close encounter should be avoided at all costs. Their opinion of him might never recover. 

Molly wears a wispy white dress to the courthouse. It’s the first time he’s seen her in a dress — Molly assures him it will also be the last time — and he smiles like an idiot at the sight. 

Will Graham and Molly Foster are married in no time at all, and, in lieu of a honeymoon, they send Wally to go camping with friends and retreat to their new house on the bank of Moosehead Lake. 

There are no announcements printed in any papers or posted online. Molly even warns her parents not to mention Will by name on Facebook. Will wants to keep it out of the public record as much as possible. He’s not sure what publications are allowed into the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane these days. 

He wonders briefly what Hannibal would think if he saw the news, and hates himself for the thought. 

_August 2016_

Will doesn’t intend to push himself into Wally’s life as a father figure. He is nine years old, and he remembers his father clearly enough to mention him from time to time. 

And the last times Will had indulged paternal feelings, he’d brought nothing but pain on himself and everyone involved. His desire to be any sort of father has always felt cloying under his skin, mostly because he knows he has no business with anything like nurturing. His job and his talent has always been death. It’s something he and Hannibal have in common. 

He wonders if Hannibal thinks about Abigail as he sits in his cell, about the life he’d envisioned for the three of them.

_Feeling paternal, Will?_

Will resolves not to think about paternal inclinations any more after that.

He takes Wally fishing with him whenever he asks to come along, and accepts his offers of help with exercising and feeding the dogs. It’s a comfortable dynamic they’ve formed. Will is determined to meet Wally’s expectations and go no further. He’ll respect the boy’s boundaries. 

They’re fishing in the lake on a clear, warm morning when Wally casually asks if he can call Will “Dad.”

His thoughts capsize like a leaking rowboat, but he manages to nod before his voice finally catches up. “Sure. I would love that.” 

He would, he realizes all at once. 

He hates that so many of his most significant memories are framed by the dark walls and ornaments of Hannibal’s office, but he’s learning to filter out the man himself. When he remembers his own words from years earlier, he doesn’t think of what Hannibal said to prompt them, or how he responded afterward. 

_I'd be a good father._

He watches Walter fishing, and thinks that in the long litany of things he's been wrong about, maybe that wasn't one of them. 

_October 2016_

He should have warned Molly about the dreams. But, in all fairness, they’d receded months ago into whatever corner of his mind produced them, and he hadn’t expected them to return, as sudden and violent as a hurricane.

He dreams that he’s back in Hannibal’s kitchen, surrounded by expanding pools of blood. It’s warm and viscous on his hands, his face, flowing from his open abdomen. Sometimes he is lying on the floor, Abigail twitching a few feet away, as Hannibal leans over him and a single tear drops from his cold eyes, blossoming like a liquid flower in the sea of blood before it’s swallowed up. 

Sometimes he is standing over Hannibal instead, gripping the curved linoleum knife as Hannibal and Abigail bleed out in front of him.

Sometimes all three of them are twitching and bleeding together.

For every iteration of the dream, the result is the same: he wakes already sitting up, eyes wide, heart racing, fingers gripping the sheets. He can’t precisely identify his emotions as fear or horror or grief. He just feels nauseous and startlingly empty.

“Will?” Molly’s voice is muffled until she surfaces from underneath the thick comforter. Her hand is warm against his arm, palm sliding against his slick skin; he’s soaked with sweat, he realizes, to his own dismay. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, dragging himself out from under the blankets. The hardwood floor is freezing under his feet and the October air is like cold needles against his damp skin. He changes shirts in a shivering hurry and climbs back into the warmth of the bed. Molly watches him carefully. 

“That’s the third time this week,” she comments. Waits for him to take the bait. 

Will isn’t biting. 

“Sorry,” he repeats. “I used to have nightmares a lot. I thought…I thought it was over.”

“Hmm,” is Molly’s reply. “Was it about one of the cases you worked?”

He can’t prevent the sudden flash of memory behind his stubbornly closed eyelids, a kaleidoscopic shift of colors, sounds, and smells, all of them based around Hannibal’s home. The rich, cobalt blue of the dining room; the rhythmic, blunt chop of their knives as they worked together on dinner; the smell of wine and roasting meats and chocolate for the dessert. The cold air of the bedroom stings his face and he burrows deeper into the comforter. 

“You could say that,” he says, trying to sound noncommittal instead of hostile. Avoiding instead of confronting. 

She is silent for several moments. The mattress creaks as she scoots close enough to wrap her arm around his waist from behind. Her hand skims a light path up his side and rubs gentle circles against his shoulder. The fabric of his shirt is thin and worn, and her fingers linger over a raised ridge of skin.

"You have so many scars," she whispers in the dark, tracing a finger over the circular groove on his shoulder left by Jack's bullet. "Where'd they all come from?”

At least she wasn’t asking about the thin line across his forehead. It was more obvious at night he was sure, shining a dead, glossy white in the moonlight. But he’d lied about that scar shortly after they first met — some nonsense about a mishap with a fishing line. It was too late to correct it now. At least she’d picked one of the scars that was easier to explain.

"That one was a bullet. I pulled a gun on a suspect and got shot for my trouble." The suspect had been Hannibal and he'd been shot by Jack, who'd assumed that _he_ was the Chesapeake Ripper. He decides not to mention the finer details.

Molly heaves a sympathetic sigh and kisses the old scar gently. The nerve endings in the twisted patch of skin are long since dead; he barely feels it.

He rolls to face her, and she trails her fingers down his chest, down to the long, pink-white gash that nearly bisects his abdomen horizontally at the navel. 

His breath catches before she asks. 

"What about this one?"

He can't string together any words to explain that one. He doesn't even want to. Funny that she’d gone straight for the root of the problem. 

"That's a story for a much darker night than this one," he tries, but his voice cracks with strain instead of good humor. Molly hears, and lifts her fingers to soothe against his jaw instead. 

"It's okay," she whispers. "Tell me on a dark and stormy night." She kisses his cheek and lays her head on his shoulder. He listens to her breathing grow deep and steady as she falls asleep against the scar left by the bullet. He feels almost peaceful again.

She never pushes him and he loves her for it.

He wonders whether the locked doors in his mind would swing open for her, if she tried. Whether she’d make it through as many doors as Hannibal had, burrowed so deep that he emerged in blood-soaked nightmares, haunting Will with his presence over the distance of years and endless miles and eternal absence. The scar on his belly itches with phantom pain. 

Sometimes, Will wishes she would push. 

_July 2017_

They’ve been married for a year, and their anniversary consists of dinner at the cheap seafood place that had been the site of their first date and an exchange of modest gifts. 

Will is perfectly content with the middling food and the bad wine as long as Molly and their memories are there, but he teases her anyway. “It’s not every day that I get to celebrate being married to you,” he says through a grin. “We should’ve gone big.”

“We’ve got loads of anniversaries to save up and do the big stuff,” Molly returns smoothly. “If you play your cards right, maybe next year we’ll go to Disney World. I’ll buy you mouse ears.”

“Didn’t know you were a fan.”

“Please. Why do you think my son is named Walter?”

He laughs, and tries his hardest to memorize the way she looks in this moment, laughing and beautiful in the candlelight. 

Much, much later, in the thick, warm darkness of their room, Will drifts between sleep and wakefulness, and in a distant corner of his mind, he registers a milestone. 

He didn’t think of Hannibal all day. 

_December 2017_

Will never cared for experiencing secondhand violence via televised news reports, and he stopped watching them altogether the moment he was associated with the man commonly called the most notorious killer of the Twenty-First Century. He absorbs a few headlines through Molly and Walter’s Facebook scrolling, and through the Portland Press Herald that Molly has delivered even though they’re in the middle of nowhere. Will feels sorry for the delivery person. 

The cover stories are always mundane: political coverage, weather, sports, the occasional open-and-shut small town murder. But one bright December morning, Molly brings in the paper and places it face down and well away from Wally’s line of sight as he works on a bowl of cereal. After he leaves the table, she pushes it towards Will. 

“It’s horrible,” she says, flat and grim. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Will flips the paper to find a crime scene photo, yellow police tape forming a web around a large suburban home. Something in his stomach plummets when he reads the headline.

_Chicago Family Brutally Slain, Killer Dubbed “The Tooth Fairy”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite chapters of this fic. The scene of Molly asking about Will's scars killed me to write, because it represents the fundamental crack in the foundation of their relationship, IMO: Will's inability to let her see all of him. Of course, conversely, maybe she was never really able to see and understand those darkest parts of him, regardless of whether he attempted to share. :( 
> 
> I believe it was Martha De Laurentiis who said once that _Hannibal_ is, in part, a show about the cost of violence and of looking too long at violence. Will pays such a high price for all his looking and his participating. One part of the cost is that there are places he can go, places inside himself, where no one can follow. 
> 
> The notable exception to that rule is Hannibal, of course. Hannibal, who sees every facet of Will, and delights in the darkest of them. It's such a seductive idea, the concept of one person who sees every part of you and isn't repulsed, but absolutely delighted. As Jack said, who among us doesn't want to be understood? So, in conclusion, POOR WILL. (I wonder how many times I've yelled that in despair since I first sat down to watch the premiere of _Hannibal_? So. Many. Times.) 
> 
> Coming up next: Hannibal finally makes a proper appearance in this fic, and, predictably, pokes at Will's stability like a shaky Jenga tower. HANNIBAL, WHY.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal makes his reappearance into Will's life in his usual dramatic fashion.

_January 2018_

It is the dead of winter when Jack comes. Will knows who it is even before he sees the black SUV crawling up his driveway; he hears the engine that isn't Molly's and has time to smooth away both the anger and the fear before Jack is in sight. 

He’d seen the second headline, roughly a month after the first.

_Return of the Tooth Fairy? Family of Four Slain in Buffalo, NY_

He knows why Jack is here. The dogs don’t seem to remember him when he climbs out of his FBI-issue vehicle, the collar of his thick wool coat turned up against the cold. Or maybe their muted response — almost indifference — means they _do_ remember him. 

He regards Will from under the brim of his hat, and Will isn’t sure whether his expression is regretful. Jack never did regret much, where Will was concerned. At least not enough to stop approaching him. It seems that even the passage of almost three peaceful years hasn’t changed that. Will sighs and surrenders to the demands of courtesy, waving a greeting as he approaches with the dogs on his heels. 

===

Jack comes bearing photos of the slain families in the Tooth Fairy murders, just as Will expected he would. He makes a passionate and guilt-laden case for Will’s return to profiling work — on a temporary basis. Refusing the request feels like leaving a fishhook buried behind his sternum and constantly ignoring the pull. 

He wishes there was a way to cut that line altogether. 

But the unscheduled visit ends congenially enough, with Molly chatting comfortably to Jack over dinner, and Will walking him out of the house and back into the freezing air and drifting flurries outside. He also expects the look of grim disappointment on Jack’s face when he holds fast to his decision _not_ to come back. 

He does not expect the small envelope of expensive stationery that Jack passes over to him just before he descends the porch steps.

“That's for you," he says without elaboration. His face and eyes are inscrutable apart from his constant hint of eagerness. Jack is always eager and determined when there's a case. He wishes Jack’s compassion was directed at him instead of through him, especially now. He feels healthy and solid for the first time in so many years. 

Will flips the envelope over as Jack crunches away through the snow. 

_Will Graham_ is the only thing written on the paper. He recognizes the artful pemanship, the sweeping, elaborate strokes of a sketching pencil put to an alternative use. Hannibal's boldness is in every line; there is cloying intimacy in every loop. It's as shocking as hearing his voice for the first time in years. 

Will shivers, but not with the cold.

"Will," Jack is calling through his driver's side window. "We could use you." He rolls the window back up and pulls away. 

===

Molly’s eyes are on his back when he sits on their bed and reaches down to pull off his shoes. He can feel her thinking, considering. She’s all warmth when she wraps her arms around him from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder. 

“How bad is it gonna be if you stay here and read about the next one?” she asks quietly. 

So Jack _had_ talked to her about the case. He should have let Wally take the dogs out on his own, and kept Jack’s conversation with his wife firmly away from ongoing murder investigations.

“If you stay here and there’s more killing, maybe it’d sour this place for you,” she speaks into his silence, infinitely gentle. “ _High Noon_ and all that.” 

“Do you want me to go?” He’s surprised; she’s never showed any eagerness about his past work before. What he’s mentioned of it, anyway. She doesn’t know everything, but she knows that it was traumatic, damaging. She knows that he very nearly lost his mind. 

“I’d have the satisfaction that you did the right thing. He kills families. No one knows how he chooses them. What if he chose us?”

“Don’t say that,” he replies automatically, accustomed to cutting off his own imagination at the knees. But Molly isn’t. Of course she’s imagining what it would be like to be targeted by a monster, to die with your family at someone else’s whim.

Will doesn’t have to imagine the scenario; he’s lived it. 

Abigail’s wet, racking gasps fill his ears for the moment it takes him to slam the doors of his memory shut. 

Molly, he thinks, is too kind for her own good. 

“If I go,” he replies, trying to explain what he has no hope of making her understand, “I’ll be different when I get back.”

“I won’t,” she says, quiet, firm, and absolutely certain. 

Will kisses her and wonders what it’s like to be so sure of yourself. 

===

He waits until Molly is soundly asleep before he retrieves the envelope from the drawer where he’d hastily stashed it, and pads silently into the living room with the paper clutched in his icy fingers. 

He takes his time restarting a fire in the cooling ashes of the fireplace and settles in a chair close enough to read by the firelight. A neat scrap of newspaper flutters out of the envelope when he slides his finger under the flap. The words _Tooth Fairy_ arein the headline; he doesn’t read further. There is only one sheet of stationary inside the envelope, and Hannibal has not taken care to hem in the size of his elegant letters. The message is very short. 

_Dear Will,_

_We have all found a new life, but our old lives hover in the shadows. Soon enough, I fear Jack Crawford will come knocking. I would encourage you, as a friend, not to step back through the door he holds open. It’s dark on the other side and madness is waiting…_

_Hannibal_

The moment he spends refolding the paper stretches long and silent in his mind. The mental silence gives way to a steady stream of internal cursing. 

That self-satisfied, unequivocal _dick_. 

Three years of silence, and _this_ is the letter he sends. Trying to incite him into God knows what. 

His anger is as hot and contained as the flames into which he drops both the letter and the newspaper clipping. And it fades just as quickly when left untended, leaving him cold and empty and unsure. His mind drifts to a session they’d had so long ago, back when he’d been so very resentful of being saddled with a psychiatrist to evaluate his fitness for field work. 

_Tell me about your mother._

_That’s some lazy psychiatry, Dr. Lecter._

But nothing Hannibal did was ever truly lazy or uncalculated. He was breaking years of silence to suggest that Will should stay away, for his own sake. 

It's what a friend would say. 

Or it's simple reverse psychology.

Or maybe he just wants to remind Will that he is waiting. For him. 

Knowing Hannibal, it's probably all three at once, along with further motives that Will has yet to discover. He's already exhausted by the game and he hasn't even properly begun to play. 

And he is going to play, he realizes at last. He can’t stand up to both Molly and Jack Crawford. And he certainly can’t stand up to the blank gazes of two dead families, let alone whatever family the Tooth Fairy targets next. 

What he _can_ do is completely disregard Hannibal’s opinion on the matter. He puts out the fire and returns to bed, his decision made. He’ll tell Molly in the morning. 

His sleep is fitful and comes in brief, uncomfortable snatches. Twice he hears the sound of steps behind him in his dreams, and turns to find hoof prints marring a glistening snow bank as the ashes of Hannibal’s letter drift in the wind, intent on coming back together. The hoof prints, he realizes eventually, are filled with blood. 

The images of the dreams fade when he opens his eyes, but he remembers Hannibal’s letter all too clearly. 

He wonders if that’s the reason Hannibal wrote such a brief message — to ensure that Will could recall every word. 

===

Jack is ecstatic when Will calls him with the news. He is already on the road to the Leeds’ New York home, the second Tooth Fairy crime scene. It’s a brutally long drive, and there’s no light when he arrives, just the faint glow of the moonlight on glass and crime scene tape. 

It’s freezing, silent, and so dark that he can almost feel it physically pressing against his skin. He’s exhausted. He really should stop at a hotel and look over the house in the morning. 

But he wants this done. He wants to go home and never think of killers or like killers again. He wants never to receive another letter in Hannibal’s unmistakeable hand. 

So Will trudges through the snow into the pressingly silent house. There is no sign of the horrors within except for a perfect circle of missing glass over the back door knob. The thermostat is still running when he steps inside, despite the fact that there is no one to feel the heat or pay the bill. He wonders that no one has thought to turn it off. 

The shards of mirror start on the stairs, trailing like a path of fairy dust through the second story hall, past the shattered frames that had held them, and leading into the master bedroom. Will glances into the children’s room first, absorbs the strings marking blood spatter patterns, and silently moves on. He blinks away the images of two sleeping boys that wrestle against the empty, bloodstained reality. 

He finally turns off his flashlight in the master bedroom and reaches for the light switch. 

The room is a riot of blood.

It explodes outward from the queen-sized bed, splashed against the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The red strings tracking spatter are so numerous that they blur with the bloodstains until Will’s eye ache with the sheer amount of _red_. He is shaking, he realizes distantly, drowning in the thick horror of what the man dubbed the Tooth Fairy has done. He can almost hear the gunshots, the screams, can almost smell the blood.

He breathes deep, closes his eyes. 

After a moment, the _almost_ becomes _can_. 

===

He sits in his car with the heater running, watching the ice melt in long streaks across his windshield as the sun comes up. The Leeds’ house looks less frightening by daylight, even wrapped in crime scene tape. 

Even if the image of the mirror shards in Mrs. Leeds’ eyes and mouth are all he can see when he closes his own eyes. 

But none of that matters — he has always been very good at what he does, and the passage of years hasn’t changed that. He can almost see this Tooth Fairy. He can almost understand him. As it is, he has several ideas to convey to Jack, particularly about the possibility of finding fingerprints on Mrs. Leeds’ body. He dials Jack’s cell the moment his dashboard clock reaches 6am, and tries not to dwell too much on the _almost_. Things have changed in the past three years, he reminds himself. 

One thing in particular. 

“Will,” says Jack’s voice, with no hint of grogginess. “What do you have for me?”

He rattles off his list of relevant details, his mind still chewing over his lack of a concrete profile for this killer. Jack seems disappointed he doesn’t have more insight as well, although he doesn’t voice the thought. He doesn’t bring up the fact that there was a time when Will was his infallible ace-in-the-hole when it came to catching killers. 

He doesn’t mention that there was a time when Will and Hannibal did this together. 

It takes an effort, but Will holds back his sigh and uses his breath to ask Jack to meet him in the afternoon. 

===

For the man who once chased Hannibal and Will across state lines and followed them across the Atlantic and back again, Jack is surprisingly amenable to allowing them to occupy the same room when Will requests the opportunity. But his gaze holds a weariness and reserve that wasn’t present years earlier. He probably wishes he’d never introduced the pair of them, Will reflects with grim humor. 

Jack isn’t the only one who wishes in that direction. 

As one of the orderlies leads Will deep into the bowels of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, he remembers telling Jack once that he hated institutions because of the uncomfortable suspicion that they might not let him back out. Time, he finds, has no power to dull irrational fears. Although that particular fear had been quite rational, in the end. He is grateful when he doesn’t recognize any of the orderlies or staff, and when the corridors they take are newer, and run away from the dark, damp, ancient levels where Will had been housed long ago. 

They recite the usual mantra about never, ever accepting items from prisoners, or passing items to them. Will has been on both ends of this rule, and he has witnessed the results of the failure to follow it. They might have saved their breath. 

The doors open on Hannibal’s cell. 

It looks more like a zoo enclosure than a cell, especially since it's located in a repurposed portion of the building. The glass barrier, complete with fist-sized openings to allow air and sound to circulate, bisects the large, open room. The elegant wall moldings, the bookshelves built into the walls, and the frame of a filled-in fireplace belonged to an office once. Will half expects to see a plaque with the inscription "Dr. Lecter in his natural habitat." 

Hannibal is standing by the table bolted to the floor in the center of his stark white room; the surface is strewn with his pencil sketches. The man himself is facing the large, blank expanse of wall that makes up the rear of his cell. His prison jumpsuit is not quite gray and not quite blue and it’s the worst-fitting garment he’s ever seen Hannibal wear. His head tilts, just slightly.

“That’s the same atrocious aftershave you wore in court,” he says. His voice sounds almost wrong ringing in the air when Will has only heard it in his head for so long. 

“Hello, Dr. Lecter,” he says, relieved when his tone is flat and professional. So different from the last time they spoke. _Goodbye, Hannibal._

There is a slightly predatory gleam in Hannibal's eyes when he turns at last, and Will wonders how he missed the Chesapeake Ripper standing in front of him for so long. His hair is shorter, his eyes just a shade less lively. He’s been confined to this room for such a very long time. 

Will is halfway to pity when he realizes that Hannibal is looking at him the same way he did years ago in a cramped courtroom — like he knows Will is hiding. Like he'll wait forever until he comes back out. He looks at him like he can see all the way through his skull. 

Whatever Hannibal finds there prompts the faint curve of his lips that, on him, is as good as an eager smile. "Hello, Will." 

===

He feels empty when he walks out of the antechamber of Hannibal's cell, leaving the case file for him to examine. The viewing area, he'd call it if he had any energy for humor. He feels punctured and drained and invaded. 

For the first time in so long, he feels _seen_. He looks over his shoulder more than once to assure himself that the sensation of Hannibal trailing after him is only a mental one. 

Alana is waiting for him in the warden's office. _Her_ office, he reminds himself, trying to shake off the image of Chilton sitting behind the warden's desk, looking at him with equal parts derision, interest, and spite. Alana's gaze is far cooler. 

She greets him with restraint, but her smile is genuine. He remembers the loose curls and flowing dresses he used to associate with Alana Bloom. He never would have used the word "severe" to describe her in those days, but now it's almost the only term he can think of. Short, precisely coiffed hair, a shining suit of sharp lines and no color. Harsh black and white stripes, like a prisoner's uniform. 

He wonders whether Hannibal makes her feel that she is his prisoner rather than the other way around. 

The only color in her pale look is the red of her lipstick, bright as the blood splashed on the Leeds' walls. It's an association he regrets as soon as he makes it. But he knew just what sort of associations he was walking into when he agreed to come back.

They talk about Margot, Alana’s wife now, and their son. He mentions Molly and Walter, and then they’ve about run out of polite, sterile conversation. The momentary silence aches a little, like an old bruise that’s almost gone. Alana smiles at him, and he can finally see past the wall of ice to the cracks behind it. He can almost see the old Alana, her eyes open and clear and full of concern as she glanced between Will and Hannibal. 

_Boundaries. Your relationship doesn’t seem to know many._

She’s worried about him, again.

“I’m not letting him in, Alana. Don’t worry about me.” It’s an automatic response, almost rote, despite a situation that is anything but. 

Alana’s smile is sad. 

===

He returns to Hannibal’s cell after the hour he’d requested was up, and they talk quietly about the Tooth Fairy killer’s methods and madness. Hannibal is deeply engrossed, and Will can almost imagine they are back in his office, pacing in the firelight, discussing the minds of killers. 

Discussing _his_ mind, and Hannibal’s. 

They wander the houses and yards of the families the Tooth Fairy attacked, and discuss whether or not the killer is deformed, or thinks he is. And in the midst of the almost professional discussion, Hannibal stabs at him with carefully-phrased daggers. 

“Like you, Will, he needs a family to escape what’s inside him.” Moments later: “Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight?”

And each time he breezes on. As if he has not just struck and drawn blood. Will wants to hate him, but all he feels is numb. 

Will can almost see a trail of blood behind him as he leaves the room nearly an hour later, Hannibal’s polite goodbye ringing in his head. _I’ll see you soon, Will._

Just as confident as the moment he knelt in the snow and surrendered.

Will feels nothing like confidence as he crosses the parking lot, eyes fastened to the asphalt. But it was a productive session, despite the cost. He’s full of new ideas to pursue and consider, just like old times.

Well, not quite like old times. In the early days, Will left sessions with Dr. Lecter feeling hopeful. Now he feels as if hope is only one of many things that dropped from his shoulders when he left Hannibal Lecter’s cell. 

===

He’s almost desperate for the sound of Molly’s voice when he calls her that night. 

“Hello, hotshot. Doing some good?”

He can breathe again. A smile cuts through his grimace like hot water through ice. _Molly._

They talk aimlessly for a moment, and he can almost imagine that he’s beside her in their bed, petting the new dog Randy she’s telling him about. He can almost imagine that they’re safe and warm and together, instead of hundreds of miles apart. He can almost imagine that he isn’t sitting beside a file packed with photos of dead bodies, and that he didn’t have to speak to Hannibal Lecter today. 

He can almost imagine that he isn’t Will Graham at all, and it’s a comforting thought. 

He’s telling her a ridiculous story about stealing a watermelon as a young boy, and she laughs as he knew she would. 

“A criminal mind, even at that age,” she laughs through the phone, and she doesn’t mean it, he knows she doesn’t mean it, but it still stings like a slap against raw skin. He’s been called a murderer and a criminal so many times just today, by Freddie Lounds and her damn _TattleCrime_ articles.

By Hannibal.

“I don’t have a criminal mind,” he murmurs, and she hears the crack in his words, even though he managed an even tone. 

“Of course you don’t,” she soothes, and he wishes desperately that she was here, so he could bury his face in her shoulder and believe her. He brushes the feeling aside; it doesn’t matter, and he won’t make Molly uncomfortable over things that are not and will never be her fault. 

They talk almost comfortably until Molly has to go. She has work in the morning, and Wally to tend to tonight. Will misses her before she’s even hung up. 

“I love you and I miss you and you're doing the right thing,” she says, so genuine, always. It warms him almost to the point of burning. “It’s costing you, too, I know that. I'm here. I’ll be here whenever you come home.”

“Good night, Molly.”

Her absence is like a wound as he turns out the light and falls asleep.

===

He dreams in red. 

Molly lies in sheets soaked with blood, eyes and mouth covered in bits of mirror that reflect his own bloody visage back to him. He did this.

In the dream, he _screams._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't always care for fics that are essentially novelizations of a show or movie, so I tried very hard to avoid simply novelizing the show during the last three chapters. The point of this fic isn't to rehash what the show has already done so well, but to focus on Will and to track his relationships with Molly and Hannibal specifically, when the show has a broader focus. Will is so complex and tragic, and following his story threads through this part of the story is fascinating to me. I did try to avoid rehashing scenes from the Red Dragon arc, but I had to include some for continuity and emotional clarity...hopefully my attempts to avoid lengthy scene recreations and to focus on missing between-the-scenes moments was successful! 
> 
> In the last three chapters, I referenced the Hannibal scripts which can be found on livingdeadguy.com. Sometimes I included lines I liked from the scripts even if they had been cut from the show. ;) 
> 
> Up next: Hannibal is the world's biggest jerk, but he sketches pretty pictures of Will. The Red Dragon wants to stop killing, but he targets Molly and Walter. And Will, poor puppy, has to deal with all of it. :(


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's playing games, as usual. But this game is anything but business as usual for Will, especially when the stakes are higher than ever before. This time it's his family that's on the line.

_February 2018_

Weeks pass, with no result except Will stumbling across the killer in the midst of destroying Blake’s _The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun._ He’s slammed against a wall and thrown bodily across the storage room of the Brooklyn Museum for his trouble, and the killer he is now thinking of as the Dragon disappears again before Will gets more than a passing look at his face.

Hannibal’s design, he’s sure. 

It’s certainly not Will’s. If he had his way, he’d have found this killer long ago and not be in the uncomfortable position of waiting for the next murdered family to be called in. According to the Dragon’s pattern, he could strike any day now. Unless, of course, his display in the museum meant that he was trying to stop. Will isn’t sure.

He isn’t sure about much of anything anymore. 

===

Will dreams of the stag. 

It’s larger than he remembers, its dark feathers fluttering despite the lack of wind in Hannibal’s cell. There is no sound when it steps over to the papers stacked neatly on Hannibal’s table; it noses at them and lifts its head to meet Will’s eyes. 

Will can’t make out any of the sketches, and he tries to follow the stag as it walks directly through the glass partition. But for him, the barrier holds. The glass is cold and unforgiving under his palm as he presses forward and watches the stag look back only once, and disappear through the door to the outside world.

===

He’s in his hotel room when he gets the call. He almost ignores the unknown number, but it’s awfully late for a random call, and something unpleasant prickles up his spine. He picks up.

“Hello?”

Molly has been shot. He stays on the phone with the policeman just long enough to hear that she’s not dying, to ask the name of the hospital, and then he’s out the door, buying the first ticket back to Maine on his phone.

They think it was the Tooth Fairy killer. The Dragon. 

Will spends the entire length of the flight wishing death on the Dragon, on Jack, on Hannibal, on himself. 

===

Molly is in surgery when he finally arrives at the hospital. 

“I promised my dad I'd take care of her,” Wally says in the waiting room, sitting beside Will in the plastic furniture bleached colorless under the hospital fluorescents. A baseball game is on across the room, and Wally’s eyes wander toward the screen. His father had played baseball. 

Will makes every trite promise he can think of, and ignores the fact that _my dad_ feels less like words and more like shrapnel lodged in his chest.

Molly is asleep when they lead him back to her room.

He grips her hand as she sleeps, and stares hard at the bandages wrapped around her torso, the scrapes and scratches across her face. Even in sleep, he can see what’s happened in the lines around her eyes and the tightness between her eyebrows. Even in sleep, she’s afraid. 

It’s something he knows well, but she shouldn’t have to. 

His tears fall onto her hand. He’s glad she’s not awake to see him fall apart.

===

He sleeps in the chair until she stirs. She’s confused, in pain, afraid. But she moves through it with grace, and comes out calm as soon as Will assures her that Wally is safe. 

“My son almost died. I almost died.” It’s been a long time since she’s said _my_ son instead of _our_. She’s processing, emotions churning and subsiding as she speaks. “I knew it was him. I _knew_ it was him. I saw your picture in that paper and I knew it was him.” It’s a solid, cold anger that’s building behind her eyes.

Molly doesn’t get angry. 

Will hates the look in her eyes, hates the hospital, hates the Dragon.

Hates himself.

He holds onto her hand for dear life, ready to try his best to help her with whatever she’s feeling, but she’s breathing deeply and already moving away from the dark places. She’s calm again.

“Hell, I got mad there for a second,” she breathes, managing half a laugh. 

He thinks Molly is the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. 

“I hate this, Molly. I'm sorry.” It’s not enough, it will never be enough. 

“This could take awhile,” she says quietly. She knows, without him telling her, that they can’t go home until this is done. Not with psychopaths targeting them. “We'll be back home, won't we?” He finally hears a hint of uncertainty in her voice, and it presses against him until something deep in his chest splinters. He swallows back the shards. 

He gives her every bit of belief and hope he has. “Yes.” 

She stares at the ceiling. For the first time since Will has known her, she has shadows behind her eyes. “Tough to hold onto anything good,” she whispers. “It’s all so slippery.”

Will nods, and ignores the sensation of broken glass shifting behind his sternum. “Slick as hell.” 

===

Will knows Hannibal is responsible before Jack confirms the fact that he's been communicating with the Dragon. He leaves for Baltimore only after extracting a promise from Jack that Molly and Walter will be guarded every moment of every day until she can travel to stay with her parents.

Will tries to think of what he will say when he faces Hannibal again, but his head feels thick and foggy with exhaustion and he spends his flight staring out the window instead. The clouds crowd out the endless streams of blood behind his eyes, the ever-flowing rivers of _almost_. Almost dead, almost lost.

He thinks back on the months before Jack arrived, of laughing and fishing in the clear, cold mornings, and curling up by the fire at night. 

Almost happily ever after. 

He's had it with all the crazy sons of bitches in this world, in _his_ world, and he intends to tell Hannibal just that. 

===

Alana waylays him when he steps into the BSHCI. He is intent on marching straight up to the glass of Hannibal’s cell, still not quite sure what he will say, but his anger is acidic enough that he is sure it will burn Hannibal at least a little. He tries not to dwell on the fact that the only words that will solidify when he reaches for his own thoughts are _how could you do this to me?_

As though he expects something other than violence and betrayal. As though Hannibal expects anything but the same from him.

He tries not to dwell on the fact that they had both expected something quite different, long ago. Once, they had expected life. 

Alana’s eyes pull him from his thoughts. She’s wearing her sad look again, behind her hard veneer. 

"I have something I want you to see," she says, voice so quiet it's almost gentle. She leads him into her office and shuts the door. Hannibal’s books are in boxes on her floor, his sketches spread across her desk. So they took his privileges, after the fiasco with the Dragon.

The rush of righteous pleasure leaves an aftertaste that is suspiciously like grief. Will ignores it and follows Alana to the desk, where the light of her desk lamp pools across Hannibal’s pencilwork.

“He sketches all the time,” she observes absently. “Whole streets of Florence from memory. It’s…amazing.” She pushes the cityscapes aside, revealing graphite faces on the pages underneath. “But his true talent is portraiture. Have you seen his portrait work?”

Will remembers Hannibal’s pencil carefully teasing the faces of Achilles and Patroclus from a blank page by firelight. In the sketch, Patroclus had resembled Will, just a little. 

“Yes,” he replies. He studies the portrait of Alana that rests just under her fingertips, a beautiful pencil sketch modeled, he’s almost sure, after a Botticelli painting. At the base, in Hannibal’s precise hand, is written, _Fortitude._

“Flattering, I suppose,” he observes. 

“Not the most flattering,” she counters, and slides her own portrait aside. 

And Will finds a perfect pencil duplication of his own face. It’s in the center of a portrait that is clearly modeled on a much older work, although Will isn’t the student of art history that Hannibal is, and he has no idea what that work might be. The figure with his face is half-collapsed on steps beneath a stone arch, his fingers partially obscuring his face. Garments are scattered around the hunched figure like shed skin. Grief and change are palpable in his posture, and the light catches the clearly defined forehead scar. At the base, Hannibal has written, _The Outcast_.

“Does he ever draw self-portraits?” he asks, refusing to touch the paper. 

Alana’s smile is brittle. “He’s not much for self-examination,” she replies. “His vanity runs more toward the accurate understanding of others, I think. Is this an accurate understanding of you, Will?”

It’s a strange thing to stare at a graphic representation of his emotions as he denies them. “No,” he says, and thinks it’s a fairly convincing lie. 

“This isn’t the only portrait of you. He’s sketched several since your first visit.” She sighs and wilts just a little. Will wonders how much her old injuries ache, whether they hurt more on days like this one. “Be careful, Will. You’ve always been the apple of his eye.”

“With friends like these,” he mutters flatly. Neither of them can manage a laugh. 

===

He isn’t able to maintain his rage as long as he wants. Hannibal weathers the first storm without blinking, and swiftly shifts them into conversation about the Dragon. He’s decided to be helpful again. Will feels like a struggling fish, tossed away only to be reeled back in. The hook stings, regardless. 

He wants to yell at Hannibal, spit the rudest obscenities he can think of in his face, and then leave and never return, but Hannibal is tightening the line again, drawing him toward epiphany. 

“The Great Red Dragon is freedom to him,” he says, staring hard at Will through the glass. “Shedding his skin, the sound of his voice, his own reflection. The building of a new body and the othering of himself, the splitting of his personality, all seem active and deliberate. He craves change.”

And light breaks across Will’s murky thoughts at last. “He didn't murder those families?” he asks, not sure whether the question is directed at Hannibal or at himself. “He changed them?”

Hannibal’s stillness is absolute, transfixing. His eyes burn in their sockets. “Don’t you crave change, Will?”

He stares back, and the hook stings.

===

He goes to Bedelia because there is no one else to whom he can say the things burning on his tongue. There was a time when he had run directly to Hannibal with his wounds and worries and confusion, but that is no longer a possibility. Particularly when what he is struggling to understand is Hannibal himself. 

Bedelia has seen behind the veil. She _knows_ him. He can’t seem to stop himself from hoping that maybe she’ll know him well enough to give Will the answer key to his endless supply of riddles. 

She listens to his recitation of the events of the past few days with her usual listless iciness. Doesn’t so much as lift an eyebrow until he’s done. He wonders if anything surprises her anymore. 

“Hannibal gave you three years to build a family and a life, confident he’d find a way to take them from you,” she pronounces at last. 

Will swallows against the pain in his throat. Thinks of Molly’s shadowed eyes and Walter’s gaze, grieved and angry. Thinks of _my son_ and _I promised my dad_. Both of them damaged and distant. “And he has,” he agrees. He wonders whether he can take them back. 

“Aggression can be an effective means of maintaining order in a relationship.” Bedelia might have been discussing the weather for all her excitement. He imagines her as an ice sculpture sometimes, and wonders about the location of the pressure point that would make her break. He’s angry at her and at Hannibal and at himself, so he pokes around for that pressure point for a while, glad to focus on landing hits rather than on his own wounds. Bluebeard’s wife, he calls her, just to watch her stiffen.

But Bedelia only tolerates patient insubordination for so long, even if Will isn’t a proper patient. He really should know better than to poke at vipers like Bedelia. The people closest to Hannibal are dangerous — he knows this. He’s one of the best examples of the fact. But Bedelia’s eyes have caught fire in the last few moments, and it’s too late for caution.

“If I'm to be Bluebeard's wife,” she retorts, her eyes shining with something between cold anger and smug satisfaction. “I would have preferred to be the last.”

Her implications slide onto his shoulders like crushing stone. He doesn’t want to ask the question that rises to his lips, but Hannibal’s sketches, his words, the way he looked at Will in his office, and in Florence, and from his cell all whirl in his head and his chest until he can’t hold it in — no matter how much he doesn’t want to know. 

“Is Hannibal —“ he pauses for a long moment, and Bedelia watches him with her dispassionate gaze. “— in love with me?” he forces himself to ask. 

He needs to know, he tells himself. He needs to understand precisely what he’s dealing with every time he ventures into that cell. 

And maybe he needs to make better sense of their past as well. 

“Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment in the very sight of you?” she answers, at length. Watching him like a cat might watch a twitching mouse. “Yes.”

Bedelia’s answer brings the mingled pain and relief of an infected wound being drained. She shows no mercy with her cuts, but at least he can be sure that the blade she uses is made of truths. She has no reason to lie, not anymore. 

She twists the blade one last time. “But do you ache for him?” 

His mind is full of distance and white noise. Funny that she chose that word. _Ache._ A deep pain of indefinite origin that hurts and hurts and _hurts_. 

His relationship with Hannibal, he realizes, has been nothing but a prolonged ache, increasing in intensity until he longs for amputation. 

This has to end, he understands at last. One way or another. The realization doesn't bring him peace, but it does bring him a pleasant sort of emptiness. And that’s almost the same thing.

“Once you catch the Red Dragon, your wife and son can go home again,” Bedelia is saying when he remembers to listen to her. “Can you?”

The words strike like daggers as Bedelia watches him with a knowing almost-smile hanging from her lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Is Hannibal in love with me?"
> 
> ...Will, you sweet summer child.
> 
> Anyway, so there was a stag sighting at last! I regret the fact that the ravenstag doesn't get a starring role in the back half of season three, so I decided to rectify the situation in my own small way. ;)
> 
> Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, writing Will at the hospital with Wally and Molly WAS AWFUL AND MY HEART IS BROKEN. POOR WILL. 
> 
> Up next: The final chapter. Inevitabilities, realizations, and resolutions. After all, one cannot control with respect to whom you fall in love. Not Will, not Hannibal...not Molly, either.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will had two great loves in his life. A double-edged love story is the deadliest of blades.

_February 2018_

In the end, their most elaborate set-ups and games count for very little. In the end, the Great Red Dragon, a man named Francis Dolarhyde, kills himself in front of his girlfriend.

All the violence and the trauma, and they found him because he gave up.

It’s an anti-climax that itches at his skin, underneath the cool sensation of relief that he can finally, finally go home. He and Molly and Walter and the dogs can retreat back to Moosehead Lake because it’s _over_. 

He entertains the idea of _not_ visiting Hannibal one last time, of just disappearing and letting Hannibal hear through others that the investigation is done, that he’d been very little help, that he’d never see Will again. 

He goes, in the end. Some ties have to be severed in person. He feels sure that if he doesn’t cut hard and deep, that he’ll feel the painful stretch of the miles between them again, just as he had when he first left Wolf Trap. 

_I’m curious if either of us can survive separation._

It’s time to find out. 

It’s a short conversation. Hannibal is disappointed by the news of the Dragon’s death, and his expression goes flat and placid when Will confirms that he wasn’t the one to kill him. Deeper disappointment over that news, Will thinks. 

Good. 

He braces himself for Hannibal’s prodding questions about whether he can truly go home again after all the trauma. He rides out those waves and waits until the waters are calm again. And then he cuts as hard and as deep as he can.

“You turned yourself in so I would always know where you are. You’d only do that if I rejected you.” He lets that hang between them like one of the impersonal gunshots that Hannibal so despises, even though it’s a perfectly lethal way of killing. Let him think that Will had orchestrated all of this. Let him grow old and die thinking that Will Graham had manipulated him into turning himself in. 

He hopes Hannibal’s hate will be less painful than his love. For both of them. 

“Good-bye, Hannibal.”

Hannibal’s silence is heavy when Will turns to leave. For the first time in all their visits, he calls Will back. 

"Was it good to see me?” he asks, through the glass, across the stretch of empty floor between them. A space he can never cross. A space that Will _won’t_. 

“Good?"

He imagines a tree, ripped up by a cyclone, crashing to the ground and dying slowly, starved of water and soil and life, and hearing the question: was it good to feel the wind? 

_Yes._

“No.” 

The doors close behind him, and he is suddenly certain he will never see Hannibal Lecter again. The knowledge splinters through him with crushing force. 

He wonders if Hannibal feels the same agony.

He walks away and wishes, perversely, that Hannibal will see through this last lie the way he’s seen through all the others. 

===

He wants to spend the cab ride back to his hotel on the phone with Molly, telling her to book a flight back from her parents’ house. Telling her that they’re all finally safe. He stares out the window and remembers, instead. 

He remembers standing over Margot in the hospital, staring at Hannibal across his office afterward.

_You don't want me to have anything in my life that’s not you._

Hannibal had placated him at the time, but his true answer had come, as usual, in an entirely different conversation, and in the guise of a story. 

_Achilles wished all Greeks would die so that he and Patroclus could conquer Troy alone._

Hannibal and his stories. Chiyoh had mentioned the power of stories, once. _All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story._

Chiyoh, Will decides, was full of shit. 

They’ve been playing games and telling stories for year after year, and nothing has changed. 

Hannibal still wants what he has always wanted. He wants Will, in whatever capacity he can have him. He wants to go through Jack and Alana and Molly and Walter and anyone else who stands in his way. 

And, God help him, Will understands. 

He isn't angry anymore, and he isn’t afraid — he’s exhausted. His throat hurts when he thinks of Molly in bandages. The throb of a gunshot wound is something she should never have had to endure. Some people deserve better than menial, meaningless pain, and she is one of them.

Will isn't. 

He aches until he wonders whether he is separate from the pain, or whether he _is_ pain, now. 

He and Hannibal have been so many things: doctor and patient, colleagues, friends, enemies, allies, antagonists…lover and beloved. He wonders whether Hannibal is able to contain all those stages of feeling at once. Will can’t. The strain is ripping him apart. 

This isn't sustainable. It never has been. 

He lets his mind wander as it did when the dead scar that crosses his gut was still an angry row of stitches, and he considers other worlds, other lives. 

For just a moment he hates the rhythms of his life and Hannibal’s, hates the facts of both. He hates that they are trapped in circumstances that mean they can never do more than hurt each other in an infinite number of ways. They see each other, but the sight only offers them despair. There is no way they can be anything except separated by the past, by the glass wall of the cell, by what Hannibal has done, by what Will has chosen again and again. They are unable to simply _be_. The cycle will repeat eternally until they die. For all Will knows, it will continue after that. 

He finally understands Hannibal's fixation on the shattered teacup, all its fragments lost to time and gravity and reality, never to come back together again. He would sit and scribble equations into a notebook if he had the skill, trying to find a way around all of it. He understands why Hannibal did just that as he sat beside his bed in Wolf Trap, waiting for the sun to rise and for Will to wake. 

He _does_ ache. They both do. 

But there is no answer. 

Until the Great Red Dragon attacks Will in his hotel room, and demands the opportunity to meet Hannibal in lieu of breaking Will’s back. 

===

Heartbreak is a quiet calamity, Will finds, not for the first time. He’s seen enough homicides as both a cop and a not-quite-agent of the FBI to know that grief is loud and chaotic for many people. Screams and tears — an explosion. 

Will has only ever collapsed inward. 

Tragedy is the natural tendency of the universe, in his experience. Death pulls at everything like gravity. And, eventually, everything falls. 

This is how Hannibal sees the universe, he knows. He paints with shades of inevitability and calls the finished work beautiful. He invited Will to join him in his notion of beauty, once upon a time. But Hannibal’s darkness is not the only thing Will sees as beautiful. 

He thinks of Molly and their home by Moosehead Lake. He thinks of Walter playing with the dogs in the yard. The three of them, all suspended in the breathless, weightless moment before gravity takes hold. A fairytale. 

But as in all fairytales, a dragon arrived to burn it to the ground. The very Dragon whose eyes Will stares into as he struggles to shake off the hazy grip of the chloroform. A dragon who is supposed to be dead. 

But Francis Dolarhyde is very much alive, and he returns Will's stare without blinking. He has a hard face, set in a permanent furrow of intensity, with bright eyes over a thin mouth and the faint scar of a cleft lip. So he and Hannibal had been right about the Dragon believing himself to be deformed. 

Will wonders at the sort of mind that could create the explosions of blood in the Leeds’ home, but look at the faded scar in a mirror and find _that_ the uglier reality. 

_Crazy sons of bitches._

He is suddenly, fiercely tired as Francis tells him that he wants to meet Hannibal. This, Will realizes, is never, ever going to end. Not as long as he and Hannibal are alive and able to strike at each other, in person or by proxy. He will never be free until Hannibal and everything he has touched is gone. 

His future with Molly by the lake crumbles away silently, and Will can do nothing but watch. Francis raves in a whisper about his own glory and strength. Will wonders distantly what it will be like for Francis when he watches _his_ delusion crumble away. Or maybe he’ll carry it until the very end, certain of his strength and purpose. 

Will wishes he had the sort of delusions that could never be shaken apart. 

He pushes back the broken pieces of his thoughts, and nudges Francis with carefully selected words. A plan is coalescing in the back of his skull. It’s ridiculous, but it’s all he’s got. 

“Hannibal’s being transferred,” he lies. “I can help you get to him. I can help you change him.” 

As if anything could ever induce Hannibal into change. His mind kicks up the memory of Hannibal’s stricken face in the kitchen so long ago. 

_Do you believe you could change me the way I’ve changed you?_

_I already have._

He lets the thought dissolve and focuses on Francis and their burgeoning plans. Focuses on anything besides the feeling of gravity taking hold and dragging him back down to earth. 

===

It’s the worst plan he’s ever come up with, and he knows it. Of course, the worth of plans he has no intention of carrying out is something of a moot point. He spins a story about using Hannibal as bait to draw the Red Dragon. Jack looks at him with a glimmer of old suspicion, but he doesn’t question him, not anymore.

He’s not betraying Jack, not really. Not when he will get everything he wants. The Red Dragon stopped. 

Hannibal, dead. 

And one more body in the bargain. Will knows he is probably not going to escape the noose he’s knotting for two other necks. And maybe that’s just fine. 

He thinks of Molly, pale and drawn in her hospital bed, her face lined with pain and the echo of fear. 

Maybe it’s even best.

Jack and Alana discuss the details of his plan, and Will’s mind drifts. Once upon a time, composers had written grand requiem masses for the dead. There is no requiem mass for Will, or for his future. 

He raises his glass when their grim meeting ends in a grimmer toast, and reflects that it is fortunate that man-made structures don't crumble as easily as their hearts. Otherwise everyone would live in ruins. 

===

He doesn't call Molly before the plan is set into motion. If he hears her voice, he might not be able to go through with all the ugly things that must be done today. He packs her smile and her laugh and a thousand sunny memories into a corner of his mind. 

She seems far away in his memories, like a photo fading with time. He wishes that, just for once, some things in his life would last.

She’ll be okay, he reminds himself. Molly can survive anything. She’s the only person he knows who never, ever breaks. Molly will live and Walter will live and they’ll take care of the dogs. Life will go on, for them.

Will, for his part, turns his thoughts to death.

Hannibal smiles at him when he steps back into his cell. So he _had_ seen through the lies. 

It hardly matters now. 

They load up into the prisoner transport van, and Hannibal watches him carefully. Will stares back and thinks that their view is remarkably similar. They’re both stuck staring through prison bars. 

===

All the stages of Will’s various plans go straight to hell. 

Will can’t help but hear Bedelia’s voice as he fights the black grip of unconsciousness and watches Hannibal climb out of the van, stripping off his restraints as he goes.

_We're all making our way through the Inferno._

He waits for his eyes to refocus, and follows Hannibal into the dying light. 

===

The Great Red Dragon is dead. Hannibal is unsteady on his feet; the bullet wound in his gut must be costing him. Will can feel the nerve endings in his torn cheek screaming to life as the blank rush of adrenaline leaves him shaking in the moonlight. Hannibal helps him up, and they stand together, black with blood and freezing everywhere they don’t touch. 

For once, he looks at Hannibal and feels entirely equal to him. The games are done, the goals accomplished. For once, he looks at Hannibal and doesn’t feel afraid. 

Murder Husbands, Freddie had called them in one of her garbage articles. Freddie had used the title for the two of them even after Will had a wife. His mind and body are shivering between shock and hysteria, and the thought comes to him like a scrap of debris caught in the wind. He holds onto Hannibal to keep himself upright, to anchor himself. He doesn't let go. 

He is so full of death that Molly’s smile seems far away. _I’ll be different when I get back,_ he’d told her. It had been stupid to assume he’d make it back at all. He wishes he could go back and be that Will Graham with the dogs and the lake and the wife and son. 

He wishes he could stay here with Hannibal, and feel this rising rush of joy without the sting of guilt and the chill of despair. 

His feet are unstable on the bluff that Hannibal said was eroding into the sea. The rock and soil lost forever, like the heat dissipating from their skin into the night air, like the lights from the shattered windows of the house, drifting out into the night, past the atmosphere, on and on into the endless dark. Lost, like the years he wanted to spend with Molly, safe and together. Like the future he knows that Hannibal is crafting for them even now.

He glances at the body of Francis Dolarhyde, the slain dragon, and for just a moment, that future opens up to him, bright and supple as a blooming flower. They could survive, hide, go on. They could do _this_ again. Hannibal would be ecstatic. There's a part of Will that thrills at the thought. 

But all the rest of him withers. There are some things, he reflects, that can't be. Some things that are lost, like heat and light and hope and love. 

Like porcelain teacups shattered on the ground. 

He remembers Hannibal's pained, drawn expression in his kitchen as Will and Abigail and their future all died together, and he wonders whether his own expression is anything like it. 

It's time to end this, he knows. Maybe Hannibal knows it, too.

He thinks two thoughts as he embraces Hannibal for the first and last time. 

_In some other world…_

' _Til death do us part._

He isn’t sure at whom each thought is directed. Maybe here, at the edge of this cliff and the end of this life, it doesn’t matter. 

He falls and takes Hannibal with him. 

===

The tears won't come.

Jack called before the news broke. She hates the man for what he put Will and their entire family through, but the call was a kindness, at least. So much better to find out your husband is probably dead from his boss than from a news report.

It’s a weird feeling, the numbness. It had spread like paralysis from the hand clutching her phone, through her arm, her chest, her head. She feels heavy and weightless, empty and packed full. 

She’s at her parents’ house for the first time in years, which is weird and regressive and comforting. Walter is asleep on the couch beside her; he’s been too afraid to sleep in a room by himself since the attack. She can’t sleep apart from passing out from exhaustion, so she sits, reminds herself rhythmically that the alarm system is set, and stares at the tv. 

Her parents had tried to feed her, reminded her repeatedly that they were there for her, and finally drifted to bed, leaving a box of tissues and plates of snacks in their wake. 

She stares at the headline that marches across the bottom of the screen. 

_Hannibal Lecter Escape_

They’d made the national news. It had been a big ruse, Jack said. 

She wonders why Will didn’t call her. 

The volume is down low so she won’t wake Wally, but she can still hear when the anchor reads the update. 

“At least six police officers and federal agents are dead after a prisoner transfer gone wrong. Suspected among the dead are Lecter himself, along with the FBI profiler he notoriously framed for his crimes back in 2014…”

She remembers Will’s reaction the few times she asked carefully about what happened in those days. 

_I remember hearing about it on the news. They showed your picture a lot. I thought you were pretty cute for a killer._

She remembers the way his eyes went glassy and distant, like he was hiding from her in his own mind. Or hiding _something_ in there. 

_So…what happened? How did you catch him?_

He wouldn’t look at her when he said, _I didn’t._ She could almost hear him think, _He caught me._

_You don’t have to tell me about this, Will —_

_Thank you._

His relief had been instant and intense. It was the first time she realized there were portions of him she didn’t have access to. Everyone had their secrets, she’d thought. It was fine, of course it was fine. She didn’t understand the source of her dread. 

Now, as she looks at the old FBI badge photo of Will, a picture she doesn’t recognize, side by side with the mugshot of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, she finally does. The thing Will so carefully locked her away from was _him._

They’d planned so much, she thinks distantly. Anniversaries and fishing trips and more dogs and getting old and grumpy together in Maine. They were going to move to someplace warm, then, and grouse at Wally to give them some grandchildren and bring them to visit. They were going to _live_.

The photos give way to a helicopter shot of a house on a cliff’s edge somewhere in Maryland. The pool of blood on the paved drive is unmistakeable, even from the air. She watches the waves pummel the rocky edge of the cliff’s base and knows in her heart that Will Graham is dead. 

The tears come at last. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, this fic hurt me so much to write. SO. MUCH. But I hope I accomplished my goal of exonerating Will Graham from the charge of being OOC, because if there is one thing I hate, it's people talking trash about my favorite characters. And Will Graham is one of my favorite characters of all time. He absolutely loved Molly. But he also loved Hannibal...and that makes the whole thing a giant, twisted mess. 
> 
> I intentionally left the ending indefinite from Will's POV, exactly like the show did. Did they both die? Did one of them die? Are they off happily murder husbanding?? WHERE IS SEASON FOUR??? I can't answer any of these questions, so I restricted myself to what I firmly believe Will was thinking and experiencing in those final moments. Even if he does survive the fall, it's still a death scene. It's the death of his previous life...and as such, it's still a tragedy. I ship Hannigram like nobody's business, but losing Molly and the life they had together is tragic. I've said it ad nauseum, I know, but...poor Will. 
> 
> What did you think of my sadly canon-compliant fic? Do you think that Hannibal and Will are happily murder husbanding? Tell me all your thoughts! And thanks to everyone who left kudos and commented. <3 I'll miss this fic, now that it's finished!


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